


and in turn they'll protect the ones they love

by hiyoris_scarf



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Angst, Drabble Collection, FMA Day, Fluff, Gratuitous Milk Puns, Humor, Implied Sexual Content, Multi, Prompt Fic, Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2018-12-01 11:56:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 5,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11485893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiyoris_scarf/pseuds/hiyoris_scarf
Summary: a place for fullmetal alchemist ficlets.newest - 9: "charming, in its own way" (riza-centric royai)





	1. casual

**Author's Note:**

> most (or all) of these migrated over from tumblr, which accounts for both their variety and their brevity.
> 
> i'll keep updating this as needed!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for royai week 2017.  
> prompt: "black tie"

“I thought we agreed to keep this…um…”

Riza paused, raking her eyes from Roy’s over-polished shoes to the single unruly spike of hair standing aloft from its fellows.

“I got bored with casual,” he said with a chuckle, shrugging his shoulders into the perfectly tailored suit jacket. Then he gave her a narrow smile. Riza looked down at her own outfit: a knee-length, off-brand  _something_  she had hastily picked up from a thrift store on the outskirts of East City.

“I’m going to look like your stodgy older sister,” she mourned. With deep longing, her mind wandered back to her wardrobe in Central—where a few weeks ago, she had hung another  _something._

Something she had never worn. Something red, and smoky, and sultry. Something she had bought on an impulse, and shoved to the back of her closet with a self-critical shake of her head.

“I don’t think anyone would mistake you for my sister,” Roy said with a low chuckle. He didn’t wear cologne, but as he approached her, Riza smelled cinnamon.

“Not unless they do things very differently here,” she replied, smirking.

Roy held her eyes for a few seconds. Suddenly, he strode over to the bed, throwing his suitcase open while Riza, bewildered, stood at the other end of the room. She watched him dig to the bottom of his luggage before pulling something out. Something shimmering, and insubstantial as mist—and very,  _very_  red.

Riza’s mouth went dry as Roy shook it out. He caught the hungry expression on her face right before she caught herself and wiped it off.

“Casual,” she coughed. Roy gave a ringing laugh.

“I had a feeling you might get bored with that too.”


	2. unsent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for royai week 2017.  
> prompt: "letters"

_Dear Mr. Mustang,_

_Thank you again for helping me sort through my father’s belongings. I would never have been able to do that by myself. I wouldn’t have known where to start._

_I hope you are doing well. I don’t know too much about the military, except, of course, what you told me. And what my father used to say about it._

_I’m a little tired these days. The house is quiet now, but not in the way it was before you came. A few neighbors have come by. Most of them are nice._

_Do you remember Mrs. Hollis? She brought strawberries over the other day. She thought you were still here._

_Life here is very quiet now. Except…_ _I shot a rabbit today._

_I’d never killed an animal like that before—one clean shot through the head, hardly any blood. I didn’t bring it back with me. Flies had already started landing on it._

__The shotgun leans against the fireplace. It’s lived there for nearly nine years. I remember sitting in front of it sometimes when I was younger, staring at the trigger, where I thought if I just tried hard enough, I could see the fingerprint of someone long dead._ _

__I must have imagined it, of course. There is no fingerprint._  
_

_I don’t think…I don’t think war is very much like shooting a rabbit through the eye._

* * *

_Dear Mr. Mustang,_

_I hope you have a warm coat, now that winter is almost here. I think I gave mine away._

_The rooms keep getting emptier, though I don’t remember emptying them. People come by to see me, because I think they know everything here is more or less for sale. I sold a box of my mother’s old embroidery yesterday. I used to look through that box and touch the stitches._

_I gave it to Mrs. Hollis, I think. I don’t remember._

_Maybe I will eat those strawberries._

_Even when I’m here, the house is empty._

_I hope you are doing well._

_I hope you are doing better than I am._

* * *

_Dear Mr. Mustang,_

_The back wall of the yard is full of holes. I’m getting better. My mother only had the shotgun, but a long time ago she taught me how to hold it, and how to reload, and how to aim._

_I’m going into town soon, to the post office._ _After that I will come home again, and I’ll practice how to hold, and how to reload, and how to aim._

* * *

_Dear Mr. Mustang,_

_I didn’t think Central would smell this bad. The streets have a sordid tang to them, like bad eggs and cigarettes. The recruit barracks don’t smell incredible either, and it’s loud. The girl in the bunk beneath me is the loudest. Her name is Rebecca. And she snores._

_There are no old shotguns here. Not like the one I left behind._

_I didn’t follow you here, you know. I’m not here because the home I used to sleep in is a crypt, or because the haunts where I used to play are graveyards, or because the body that once held me has decided it is only half mine._

_I’m not here because of him. And I’m not here because of you._

_In fact, I hope I don’t see you. You’re far away, burning things._

_Maybe I will go into the desert someday too, and maybe I will never come back._

* * *

_Dear Mr. Mustang,_

_The desert is where they sent me after all. They didn’t tell me whether or not to come back—only that I am to kill as many as I need to, and as quickly as I can. Did they tell you that too?_

_There is something they don’t teach you about being a sniper. The moment you fire, you realize how lucky you are: that it is you on this side of the barrel, and not your enemy._

_I’ve often thought how righteous it would be if I could just feel pain for someone in the crosshairs–but I have no room in me for righteousness. I’m only terribly grateful t _hat it is me there, with my eye on the sight, and my finger on the trigger.__

_Terribly grateful that I am the face of death, and not someone else._

_I think that beneath our different skins, Mr. Mustang, you and I are the same kind of monster._

__I wish I could see you do it just once. I wish I could stand in the middle of it. I wish the noise and smoke and sulfur could make me stop remembering you, and I wish I could be one of the things you burn, and I wish I wish I wish I wish I could have you and know your shape and understand the whys and the mysteries of you._  
_

_But I still know how to hold, and how to reload, and how to aim._

_And war is a bit like shooting a rabbit through the eye after all._


	3. interesting news

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for royai week 2017.  
> prompt: incendiary
> 
> !!!this chapter has some nsfw content!!!

Out of all the things Riza Hawkeye liked about Roy Mustang, one of her favorites was that he could set her on fire without even putting on his ignition gloves. _  
_

It was a skill. Like alchemy, it required precision, calculation, dedication…devotion.

Sometimes, to her dismay, he could do it without even touching her. Over the scratch of pens and the rustle of papers, her eyes met his over their desks. Then, he smiled…not an altogether friendly smile. It was a sharp, burning sort of smile—and his eyes were wolfish, starving—and suddenly Riza’s collar began to feel unpleasantly tight.

Suddenly, he pushed his chair back from the desk. The squeal of the chair legs on the floor raised heads around the room. Riza’s lips tightened.

“Got a memo from Elizabeth this morning,” he said carelessly, rolling his shoulders. “I’d better go check in to see if she’s got new intel. Hawkeye?”

Riza stood up, pushing her chair neatly back under her desk.

“Of course, sir.”

The two of them walked down the bright hallway, down a short staircase, and into a darker, narrower realm of Central Command where the offices were empty, and strange noises were chalked up to rats.

“Do you think Elizabeth has anything interesting news for me today?” he asked.

“I hardly know what you consider ‘interesting news’ sir,” Riza responded. Her uniform was buttoned all the way up to the front of her throat—a decision she was now profoundly regretting.

Roy walked in front of her—as usual. And as usual, he turned the knob of the fourth door to the right. As usual, it was unlocked.

And, as usual, once they were inside, the muzzle came off the wolf.

Roy kissed her, driving her back against the cold wall of the supply closet. His tongue teased sparks on her lips, and then he tilted her head back. He hooked the corner of her mouth with a rough thumb, and her lips opened. He gripped her chin, holding her close and still against him. He kissed her until her knees were weak—until her lips were dark and bruised. He pulled away from her a short distance, wiping the corner of his mouth.

Riza looked at him through half-lidded eyes. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. At this point, the heat beneath her uniform collar could really be considered torture.

“Anything yet?” she murmured.

Roy’s hungry gaze flickered a bit.

“Hm?” He ran a finger down the opening of her jacket, tugging it not quite enough to open.

“Have you—”

He sank to his knees in front of her, and Riza felt herself begin turning to liquid.

“F-found any…”

—Unfastening her belt, slipping her out of her rough uniform pants, sucking a long, wet mark on the quivering muscle of her inner thigh—

“…In-interesting,  _ah_ —interesting news.”

He chuckled, his breath hot against her wanting skin. Her fingers clutched his hair as he dragged his nose up the crease of her hip. Then, returning, to kiss her again over her underwear. Riza held her breath as he dragged her undergarments down.

“I think…” he muttered. His breath against her made her twitch and moan. He grabbed her hip, pinning her against the wall. Riza felt him smile against her, her nerves bunching into tight points of flame beneath his touch.

“I think I’ll come across something interesting very soon,” he said.

It was fire. She was all fire.


	4. holster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tumblr sentence prompt: "go to sleep."

“Go to sleep.”

“I’d enjoy that, sir, but your holster is digging into my spine.”

Riza froze, then arched away from Roy as far as the cramped space would allow.

“That… _is_  your holster, isn’t it?”

He snorted so loudly she was tempted to jam her knuckles into his mouth. Stealth might be out the window, but at the very least she could prevent him from blowing the _entire_  lid off their operation.

“I would think you’ve handled enough holsters in your life to answer that adequately, lieutenant,” Roy whispered with a grin.

Riza buried her face in her arms. He enjoyed their stakeouts far, far too much.


	5. steamed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tumblr sentence prompt: "are you kidding me?"

“Are you kidding me?” Winry groaned. Ed waved down at her from the roof, a wide, sheepish grin on his face. The ladder he had used to get up there was now lying unhelpfully on the ground.

“Wanna help me out?” he asked in a cheerful voice.

Winry planted her hands on her hips.

“I don’t know,” she said, drawling the words out mockingly. “I feel like I should  _milk_  this opportunity.”

Ed’s grin began to droop.

“Winry…?”

“It’s not  _dairy_  often a former state alchemist gets stuck on the roof.”

Ed began grinding his teeth together, and Winry pressed a fist to her mouth to hide her laughter.

“What’s wrong, Ed? You’re looking a bit steamed!”


	6. mustache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for a tumblr sentence prompt.

Roy learns the true meaning of heartbreak the day he asks, half-joking, "If you could change one thing about me, what would it be?" and Riza replies, with no hesitation, "Your mustache."

“Really?!” he asked, sputtering. “Not even our workplace status so that we could finally date?”

“Nope!” said Riza cheerfully.

“Not even my history as a war criminal?”

“Nuh uh.”

“Not even–” Roy swallowed. “Not even my foot fungus?”

Riza met his eyes, and her own were suddenly as cold as watered steel. Roy shivered.

“Sir,” she said quietly, terribly. “The mustache is a fungus of the soul. It is the demon that lives in my sleep, infesting my waking hours with the knowledge that when I close my eyes, it is there. I cannot look you in the eye. I am forced to gaze slightly to the left of your face whenever we talk, but even then–I can see it. I see its shadow quiver with every word you speak. Sometimes I lie awake at night and try to remember a time before the mustache, and it is like trying to remember a life that has never been mine.”

Riza stopped. She took a deep, shuddering breath. Roy just stared at her, his jaw working.

“So…you’re sure you don’t think it’s just the tiniest bit sexy?” he asked, giving the mustache a flirtatious twirl. Riza reached for her gun.


	7. a deal is a deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tumblr sentence prompt: "don't make me do this."

"Don't make me do this."

“A deal is a deal, Fullmetal.”

Ed shook his head despondently.

“I still don’t know how you could even remember something like that. It was 3 a.m. and you had more whiskey in you than blood.”

Mustang smirked, and repeated sagely: “A deal is a deal.”

Grinding his teeth together, Ed gave the very pregnant, very amused Winry an apologetic glance before extending his hand. Mustang, looking altogether too pleased with himself, took it.

“God… _dammit,”_ Ed growled. “Fine. If it’s a boy, his middle name can–can be–”

He gave a slight shudder.

“…Roy.”


	8. anniversary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for FMA Day, 10-3-17.

It was a quiet day. Many of his days were quiet.

However, the morning did start with rather a lot of screaming. The little one had woken from increasingly severe night terrors, and now she clung to his neck like a soft, squirmy, tearful bib.

“Did you have a bad dream?” Ed asked his daughter. She nodded violently, sniffling into his shirt.

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

She shook her head with equal enthusiasm. The little pigtails Winry had lovingly curated the night before were bobbing at half-mast. He tried to untangle some of the knots with his fingers, but quickly exchanged that endeavor for a new tactic.

“Do you want ice cream for breakfast?”

She sniffed once, hesitant, half-expecting the offer to be rescinded. Then, tentatively, she nodded.

“Don’t tell your mother,” Ed said, giving the hallway door a nervous glance as though Winry would materialize behind him with a lecture about nutrition.

Downstairs, he spooned up two generous bowls of ice cream, and sat opposite his daughter as she solemnly scooped half of it into her mouth.

“It was a really bad dream,” she said, once fortified by dessert. “There was a lot of yelling. I think that was me.”

Ed nodded. “Yes, that most certainly was you.”

A dribble of vanilla ran down her chin, and she wiped at it, leaving a sticky smear across her face. Ed leaned across the table with a napkin.

“There was lightning inside our house. And lots of hands.”

Ed stopped. His arm still extended across the table, napkin hanging from his fingers.

“Then everything was white for a minute, and I was crying…and I hurt a lot, and it felt _real_.” She looked at him, forehead creased over huge, watery blue eyes.

Beneath his sickness over the nightmare, Ed’s stomach churned with a new kind of horror: the kind he imagined Hohenheim must have felt when he looked at his sons, and he knew what they had done, and what they had seen.

“It wasn’t real,” he said. He wiped the ice cream off her chin, and pinched her fat cheek.

“But it _felt_ real—”

“A nightmare is only as real as you make it,” he interrupted, telling himself as much as her.

The kitchen door creaked open. Winry stood on the other side of it, rubbing her eyes. Ed yelped, sweeping both bowls off the table and into his lap.

“Why are you two up so early?” she croaked. Her hair was a sleepy nest of tangles, and her thick slippers slapped softly across the floor as she shuffled over to the table. Instead of sitting down next to Ed, she leaned on the back of his chair, resting her chin on top of his head. He caught a comfortable whiff of old automail grease, lemongrass soap, and toothpaste.

“Ice cream,” he admitted.

“Mmm,” Winry hummed. “Leave any for me?”

Ed offered her his own unfinished bowl. She took it from him, holding it at eye level in front of his face as she scooped a spoonful into her mouth. A cold drop landed directly on his nose, and he jumped.

“Hey!”

She rapped him on the forehead with the butt of the spoon. “It’s your own fault for digging out the ice cream at five thirty in the morning.”

“It was under extraordinary circumstances,” Ed muttered.

Winry set the bowl and spoon back down on the table. She sighed, her cheek pressing warm against the top of his head.

“I know.”

: : :

The brothers were sprawled out beneath the big apple tree in the backyard. Winry and May sat with matching cups of coffee at the outdoor table. May began laughing heartily at something Winry said, holding her round, expectant belly while her shoulders shook. At the back of the yard near the fence, the young Rockbell-Elrics were enthusiastically experimenting with their blunt kunai: a gift from Xing that Ed strongly suspected originated with its emperor.

Alphonse was drawing squiggles in the dirt with a short stick. The squiggles morphed into stick figures, into cursive letters, into sharply angled renditions of the distant mountains.

“I miss when you were better at alchemy than I was,” he said suddenly.

Ed snorted. “Yeah, those four seconds were really fun.”

“No,” Al insisted. “I mean it. I really miss that.”

“I wasn’t the gifted brother, Al. Just older.”

Al sighed deeply, and set down the stick.

“I miss trying to overtake you in skill. It was your progress that guided me, Ed, and now I don’t remember what that felt like.” He shut his eyes, wiggled his human fingers. Enjoyed the dirt that caked underneath his fingernails.

 _“_ There’s no one to be _greater than_ anymore.”

Ed grinned. “For my humble little brother, you sound damn conceited.”

Al gave a short laugh. “Yeah, I suppose so. But…don’t you understand?”

Ed nodded, slowly. He picked up the stick Al had dropped, and drew a circle in the dirt. It was a flawed shape; the circumference shivering under an unsteady hand.

“See?”

His voice held no sadness. If there was a trace of melancholy, it was sleeping underneath the heavy years of contentment: that what had happened to him was what should have been, and that what he sacrificed had been worth its loss.

“I can’t draw a perfect one anymore.”


	9. charming, in its own way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riza Hawkeye enjoys herself at the Elric-Rockbell wedding.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Roy Mustang muttered, rather louder than was necessary. “Fullmetal made it through without imploding.”

In front of their gathered friends, neighbors, what seemed to be half the Amestrian military and more than a few rowdy chimeras, Edward Elric and Winry Rockbell shared their first kiss as husband and wife.

“Sir,” Riza said, sighing gently. “Please don’t ruin this for him.”

The ceremony was short, and quickly followed by the sound of multiple champagne bottles being popped open, and the tuning of an unorthodox quartet. Breda carefully assembled a gleaming flute, while Fuery hauled a tuba out of a case twice his size. Sig Curtis tightened the strings of an upright bass, and Garfiel, still sniffling wetly from the emotional turbulence of the ceremony, tested the keys of his accordion. As they began to play, Ed and Winry swept onto the swath of shorn grass that served as a dance floor, and were met with riotous applause

“Don’t trip, Fullmetal!” Roy crowed. Riza put her heel heavily on his instep, and he yelped.

Ed did not trip. In fact, it quickly became obvious that he was unable to hear or see anything else. His eyes never strayed from Winry’s soft, rosy smile.

“Some bubbly, Riz?” Rebecca Catalina asked, appeared at Riza’s side holding two champagne flutes.

“Please,” Riza said gratefully, taking the glass her friend held out to her.

“What, none for me?” Roy asked in a hurt tone.

“Nope!” Rebecca laughed buoyantly, sashaying into the crowd and appearing on the dance floor moments later with Zampano, who looked like he wasn’t quite sure how he had ended up there.

Riza looked at the dancers, her eyes smiling as she found Alphonse and Winry, who laughed as they waltzed, while Ed twirled Pinako around the dance floor like she weighed no more than a broomstick.

Roy turned to her and chivalrously offered his arm.

“Care to dance, Hawkeye?”

A sword materialized between them, smacking Roy’s hand with the flat and sending him stumbling backward.

“H- _hey!_ Olivier—!”

“That’s General Armstrong to you, buffoon.”

The general sheathed her sword, and greeted Riza with a terse nod. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, captain.”

Riza gathered herself quickly enough to return the nod. “Likewise, general.”

Roy slunk around behind Riza, shielding half his body as Olivier Armstrong measured him up and down with eyes as cold as ice chips.

“What are _you_ doing here?” he asked, forsaking any semblance of gallantry.

Armstrong looked at him down her nose.

“I consider the Elric brothers to be the sons I never had,” she said, inscrutably. Riza couldn’t tell if she was serious.

“Oh,” said Roy, at a loss for words.

“Shouldn’t you stop sniveling behind your subordinate and ask me to dance?” Armstrong asked. Riza could only give him a sympathetic half-smile as Roy offered the general his hand and escorted her to the dance floor—looking rather more like he was being led to the firing squad.

Riza finished her champagne, and snagged another glass from the trays traveling among the guests. She skirted the dance floor, avoiding interested eyes as she searched for an empty seat at one of the round, white-draped tables.

“Over here!” someone called to her, and Riza turned to see Alphonse waving at her from a nearby table. She smiled warmly at him as she took the seat he offered.

“This is such a beautiful wedding,” she said with sincerity. White and gold paper lanterns bloomed from wires strung between the trees, bathing the grassy reception in a fairyland glow. After the first few dances, the quartet had disbanded. They were replaced by a gramophone that wafted a soft, yearning melody over the crowd.

“Thank you,” Al said. The tips of his ears turned pink. “I did most of it. They needed someone tall.”

“Well, you have a wonderful eye for decoration.”

The pink spread from Al’s ears to his cheeks. “Actually, all of that was Winry. And Granny. And May. And Paninya.” He sighed. “Actually…everyone else except me.”

Riza chuckled generously.

“Still, they needed someone tall, didn’t they?”

She held up her glass. Al, after hesitating for a moment, grinned and clinked his against it.

“Yes, they did.”

The evening got cooler, and above the music of the gramophone, crickets began to sing. As the champagne flowed, along with other, stronger spirits, the party grew louder. Riza was on her third flute, and beginning to feel quite floaty in the head.

Roy stumbled off the dance floor and collapsed in the chair next to her, which had been left abandoned by Al once May pulled him aside for some “advice about the snack table,” and had never returned.

“It’s a war zone out there,” he wheezed, and slumped against her shoulder. “Comfort me, captain.”

Riza patted him professionally on the back. “There, there, sir.”

“I had to dance _twice_ with Olivier—she led, by the way—and then I ended up having to congratulate Fullmetal for fifteen minutes, and of course to be polite I danced with his wife (lovely young lady, far too pretty for him)—and, Hawkeye, he glared at me the entire time, you’d think I had some sort of _reputation_ —and then Breda spilled sauce down his shirt so I helped him clean it up, and then I looked for you, but ended up talking to Fullmetal again—did you know he’s been compiling some ancient Aerugan and Cretan alchemical records? Turns out their name for human transmutation was something like: ‘ _really_ bad idea,’ or maybe, ‘if you enjoy having limbs, don’t do this’—the old translation was kind of tough to parse…”

Riza tuned him out as he waxed on about alchemy for a bit longer. The champagne was making her chest feel very light.

“…And _then_ I finally found you again, all the way here in the back by yourself,” he finished at last. He removed his weight from her shoulder, and Riza found herself missing it.

“I wasn’t alone the whole time,” she said honestly.

“Have you danced with anyone yet?” Roy asked.

“No,” she said.

“Good.”

His eyes found hers.

“I wanted to be your first dance tonight,” he said in a completely different tone: low and secretive.

Riza hoped it was merely the alcohol in her blood making it sing. Before she could respond, Rebecca collapsed without preamble into the chair on her other side, kicking her shoes onto the grass and rolling her ankles rapturously.

“What are the chances I could get either of you to massage my feet?” she groaned.

“Bad,” said Riza.

“I’ll do it,” offered Roy.

“No you won’t,” said Havoc, appearing on Rebecca’s other side. He handed her a glass of water, then sat down to pull her feet into his lap.

“You are the perfect man,” she sighed.

Riza stood up, stretching her spine.

“I’ll leave you two to…whatever this is.” She waved at Havoc and Rebecca. “I think it’s time I said hello to Edward and Winry.”

“I’ll come with you,” Roy said, standing quickly. They made it approximately fifteen steps before Gracia Hughes caught sight of them, tugging a drowsy Elicia in her wake as she came to say hello. Riza, after hugging both of them, excused herself.

Roy raised his eyebrows at her. _Running off again?_

She shook her head slightly, tilting her chin toward a flash of white in the crowd. _Later._

He smiled in understanding, and carried on his conversation with Gracia while Riza worked her way over to Ed and Winry.

“Hawkeye!” said the groom joyfully as she approached. Then, catching himself, “I mean, uh. Captain!”

“Hawkeye is fine, Ed,” she said, laughing a bit as she hugged him. “You might even consider calling me Riza these days.”

Ed shivered at the thought.

“Nope. I’ll stick with Hawkeye. You still scare me.”

“Ed—!” rebuked Winry half-heartedly, and Riza turned to her. She could only assume the girl hadn’t been getting much sleep the past several days, but you would never know it from her appearance. When Winry’s face broke into a huge smile, Riza suddenly understood why Ed had been unable to look anywhere else.

“I’m so happy you could come, Miss Riza,” she said, her eyes shining.

Riza gave the bride a long, tight hug, and for the first time since the wedding had started, tears stung the back of her throat and the corners of her eyes. After letting go of Winry, she looked between the two of them, at their young faces lit from within with impossible delight.

“You both have my deepest congratulations,” she said with utmost sincerity. “I don’t think either of you could have chosen better.”

Ed blushed, and stammered out a thanks. Winry gazed at him fondly, and his stammering got worse.

“Articulate as always, Fullmetal,” said a deep voice from behind her, as Roy came up to her side.

“Shut up,” Ed muttered.

“Good evening, captain,” Roy said. His voice was close to her ear, making her heart slam against her ribcage _._

“Good evening, sir,” she said calmly.

“Is your next dance spoken for?” he asked, offering her his arm.

“Actually—” Ed began to extend his hand, but his new wife elbowed him hard, and he swallowed the words. A secret, scheming smile was playing around the corners of Winry Rockbell-Elric’s mouth, and Ed knew better than to get in the way when she wore that look.

“It is not,” said Riza, truthfully.

“Then, shall we?”

They walked together to the dance floor, which was far more empty at this point in the night. Only four or five other couples still swayed to the music of the gramophone. Roy put one arm around her waist, tugging her close as his other hand took hold of hers.

Their dance was silent for a few minutes: a wordless communication of step and rhythm. Riza could feel that her cheeks were flushed from the champagne.

“It’s been a little while since we danced,” Roy said. The hand on her waist tightened as they did a half-spin.

“A few years,” she confirmed. Her hand crept slowly, slowly, from his shoulder to the back of his neck.

“We should make an effort to do it more often,” he said. “I think you might be rusty.”

“That’s entirely possible, sir.”

They circled and dipped, mirroring each other seamlessly. A few of the other dancers stepped off the dance floor, and the lights seemed to dim. The music from the gramophone changed, loosened from a waltz into something freer, sweeter.

Roy dropped her hand, and for a moment she thought the dance was ending. But rather than letting her go, he put both hands on her hips, sliding them up to her waist as he pulled her closer. Riza’s nose touched his shoulder, brushing the rough fabric of his dress uniform. After taking a moment to steady her breath, she wound both arms around his neck.

“You know,” he said. His breath was warm on her ear, and goosebumps prickled along her neck. “This whole ‘wedding’ thing is charming, in its own way.”

Riza shut her eyes. “I agree. Very charming.”

They swayed.

“I’d like to try it myself, if the time is ever right,” he said. His voice cracked, ruining the nonchalance of his words. “What do you think, Hawkeye? Is it a good idea?”

“A lot of people seem to think so,” she said, trying to ignore how she could feel his heartbeat against hers.

Roy chuckled. His arms around her were very, very warm.

“Someday, perhaps,” he murmured into her hair.

She rested her forehead against his shoulder. The music was soft, dying.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Maybe someday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a birthday gift for my beautiful friend Gio (@themusicalbookworm on tumblr) <3


End file.
